Ok, but Colin Cowherd is an ESPN/Disney employee, too, and he manages to be a little edgy. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand Cowherd. I have no idea how someone with such little knowledge of sports gets a sports radio show, but that is another topic.
Maybe they feel Mike & Mike’s timeslot makes them more available to kids or something, so they are ultra PC. I really just think it’s a Mike Greenburg thing, though. Golic and guests, such as Marcelus Wiley, will voice their opinions one way or another. And I can understand that Greenie is the straight man or whatever, but he’s just way to cautious to be likeable.
I bounce between them and NPR on the way to work, depending on which is less depressing ;). They’re morning-radio sports shtick, but decent shtick, so they can be fun. I don’t like Boomer and Cartman on the other NY Metro sports station, the Fan…
No idea who Mark Levine is - and yeah, I would assume M&M are a popular syndicated show…
I tend to agree on Boomer & Cartman but I have a fade point between the NYC station and the Philly station for ESPN and WFAN has a really strong signal. So I often put up with their stupidity for the elongated updates they do. NPR thankfully has two different show in the AM drive time so that is a big help.
That’s what I originally wanted to answer but it was remarkably difficult to google. I found that they’re barely top 10 in Chicago, but they’re doing gangbusters in St. Louis. The most interesting datapoint is that they didn’t get syndicated to St. Louis until January 2009, so their low national ratings may be due to low market penetration.
Mike and Mike are okay, but a little boring. I tend to listen to Boomer Esiason and Carton on WFAN, even though Carton is only occasionally amusing (and is a racist).
Cowherd is vile and I punch the radio if I ever accidentally tune into ESPN by accident. He’s also quite sexist and moronic so I don’t think the Disney brand has any bearing on ESPN Radio hiring decisions.
Chicago is a tough radio market to penetrate, we have a ton of talk radio choices that people are very loyal to. I think that the local ESPN affiliate was doing much better in the afternoon with the local guys for a few years, but then they did what everyone else does and fired Dan McNeil for being Dan McNeil, which was the right choice but tanked them in the ratings because that show was basically Dan McNeil and his two dumb buddies.
